The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women [Paperback]

'The Decline of Males' is one of those rare books that, if the argument is understood, promises to radically alter your way of looking at the world. That alone should justify it being described as a classic and it is a work that should undoubtedly be attracting greater and more serious attention than it so far has. Lionel Tiger, a respected professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, applies his discipline, as well as the lens of Darwinism, to the massive social and political changes that have occured in the last few decades. In particular, the transformation in the overt political and economic power enjoyed by women, a radical and quite remarkably rapid change in the fumdamental way that men and women had lived unshaken for thousands of years in every corner of the globe and yet which is now beginning to crumble even in such macho refuges of patriarchy as Latin America. Only the Islamic world seems to have the spirit to resist.

Tiger puts all of this change down to one event, the innovation and widespread use of the contraceptive pill in the 1960's. For the first time in human history, men have been excluded from the reproductive process, leading to a loss of faith in the paternity of their mate's offspring, a consequent reluctance to 'commit' and therefore a need for women to enter the labour market and political sphere to ensure that adequate care for their children is obtained.

Thus Tiger has reduced feminism, that great bedrock of our contemporary assumption to have made social and liberal 'progress', to a sexual trade union movement fighting not for high minded notions of equality or fairness but for the primitive sexual and reproductive interests of women. This is something that I, for one, have believed to be obvious for a long time, but not something I had ever seen claimed in print before.

Tiger's language is not quite as brutal as mine, but not only does he see feminists and women simply reacting half subconsciously to a technological innovation, the consequences of which could not have been foreseen, he sees feminism as something that has almost been forced upon women. The reviewer below writes that the changes in society can be explained by such things as looser morals, decline of religion etc. To be fair, if the book can be faulted, it is that perhaps Tiger does not articulate his argument quite sharply enough. Each step can appear lost amongst all the references and studies, and it is not always clear to discern why the loss in male faith in paternity is so obvious or inevitable. It seems to me that the pill has led to women becoming more promiscuous and yet women have found that instead of sexually liberating themselves, it has liberated men from the obligation or desire to commit to any unplanned pregnancy. This has led to the rapid need for women to enjoy political and economic 'equality' with men.

Granting that the 'loss of faith in paternity' part of Tiger's argument is not presented as clearly as it could be, I don't think it degrades the fact that the broad sweep of what he is claiming is not only plausible but of fundamental importance. He has identified the fact that the control of the means of sexual reproducation has shifted from men to women and persuasively claimed that this is a better model for explaining social change than even the Marxist notion of ownership of the means of economic production. Whether or not this change in sexual reproduction is down wholly to the pill, or even to be defined in terms of the pill or rather simply the fact that the sexual mores of the human race are now decided by feminists in actual government or in the lobby groups that they dominate, Tiger's thesis remains a whole new way of looking at contemporary politics and social change, politically incorrect and uncomfortable though it may be.

The book is now nearly a decade old and yet it seems astonishing that there has been no follow up, either from other academics following where Tiger has tread, or by the author himself. I had a thousand questions in my head after finishing it, questions of the type that surely it would be an intellectual crime not to pursue, such as does the book's thesis explain certain puzzling features of feminism, such as why western feminists are so silent about Islam and the 'subjegation' of their sisters in the Islamic world? Beliving that modern feminism is simply a sexual trade movement borne of an unforeseen necessity, in my opinion, does explain the massively lopsided importance feminists place on such things as banning prostitution and pornography whilst doing absolutely nothing about the daily treatement of women in the Islamic world, for example stoning to death of women for adultory or being whipped for showing an uncovered face. Perhaps women are indeed largely content under Islam because they can be sure that their reproductive needs will be supported, and that is all most women really want.

'The Decline of Males' could be the birth of a men's movement, it surely should at least transform gender studies from it's present role of self-pitying liturgy of complaints against men into something that tries to honestly apply scientific discipline to the analysis of society and to reach an explanation of social change rooted in the competing sexual interests of male and female that are the undeniable mechanisms that lies behind every other primate society.

Those who are dazzled by the many successful projects (e.g., Stalinist Russia, the Great Cultural Revolution) based on the assumption that human beings are infinitely malleable will object to Tiger's obstinate belief that there is a thing which is usually denominated "human nature." Never mind them, as the ancient Persian Proverb tells us: "The dogs will bark but the caravan moves on." For those of us with sufficient introspection (to mention but one category of evidence) to have noticed that such a thing exists, it will not seem scadalous to suggest that: 1) drastic changes in long-standing customs will have multiple effects; 2) these effects are not all predictable; 3) they are not all necessarily guaranteed to be beneficial; 4) we ought to give them some serious consideration. This seems reason enough to buy the book, but the discomfort of pious correct-thinkers makes a nice garnish.

Lionel Tiger's insightful new book focuses on changes that are influencing virtually every facet of American society. It is no secret that, since the introduction of birth control, elemental patterns of dating, mating and sexuality have undergone a revolution. Gender barriers that seemed insurmountable two generations ago have greatly diminished if not vanished completely (in 1920, who would have thought that roughly half of Ivy League undergraduates would be women?) Not all the consequences of these changes have been expected or understood. Tiger forces us to confront many of them that have escaped previous analysis.

Some people, of course, would rather not think about the facts and issues that now confront us. To see how explosive Tiger's work can be, you need only read the outraged reaction of the Kirkus reviewer. It's not hard to see why highly ideological feminists, with a vested interest in ideas not facts, might be outraged by the book. But for the rest of us, The Decline of Males is must reading.